


Meet Yourself Coming From the Other Direction

by Merlin Missy (mtgat)



Category: Wreck-It Ralph (2012)
Genre: F/M, Misses Clause Challenge, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-15
Updated: 2014-12-15
Packaged: 2018-03-01 14:08:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2775836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mtgat/pseuds/Merlin%20Missy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's new game day at the arcade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meet Yourself Coming From the Other Direction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kharasma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kharasma/gifts).



The eggheads at HQ come up with the most hyena-brained bugspit Calhoun has ever heard. Dynamic regeneration and parallel processing universes and quantum gameplay and ugh. Her own brain rattles just hearing the words, much less parsing the addled shoe gum those Dilberts come up with. Calhoun's focus is a sleek, clean gun in her hands and a Cy-bug in her sights. She doesn't need to wonder about the meaning of it all when she's busy leading raw recruits into the fray.

Felix has other ideas. When he wanders over to Hero's Duty during the arcade's off hours, he eats up all this stuff with a sugar spoon. He'll lay on his stomach, an apple cheek in each hand and a stupid grin on his face, listening to the droning recordings all night.

"Wow," he'll breathe after hearing another inscrutable science lecture. "If that don't beat everything."

Calhoun has learned patience around Felix. He's filled with a childlike wonder she was never programmed to understand. His game is decades older than hers but when she's with him, she feels like they're both young, new to this digital world. It makes up for the times she thinks his brain was programmed by inebriated parakeets. "Mind giving me the enlisted man's version?"

"Parallel worlds," he says, and Calhoun just stops herself rolling her eyes. This again.

"My processors are not parallel, thank you very much."

"Naw, not like that. This is some heavy stuff, Tamora." She lets him use the name. She guesses he's allowed. Part of her wants to change her first name to "Sergeant" if they ever get in another Grand Theft Auto with a judge handy. Another part wants a promotion.

Felix goes on, oblivious to Calhoun's disinterest. "It's like we're living our lives, but there's another world out there with other Felixes and other Tamoras. In those worlds, we might be astronauts, or the sky might be orange. Or we might never have met." His weirdly adorable round face droops. "Well, that'd be terrible."

Calhoun waits half a second. A lot of men would let the next natural thought take flight: multiple Calhouns, multiple women to adore him. She waits and she reads his innocent face, and the thought never even crosses his mind.

That's why she likes him.

"Enough jawing," she says. "I've been waiting all day for you to get your butt over here." She smacks the bunk beside her, hoping he'll hop up here already.

Felix grins, and she sees the bad thoughts fall out of his head, just like that.

* * *

It's new game day, the one day every month that Mr. Litwik installs a new system. The old games spend the whole day caught between excitement and terror.

"We're retro," Felix says, pacing back and forth across the lawn in front of the apartment building. "We're retro. That means 'cool,' right?"

"Yeah, we're cool," Ralph says, his eyes following Felix's pacing. He's not worried. He used to worry every month the same as the rest, but the kids line up to place tokens for next turn on their machine. It's great.

"What if we're not cool enough?"

"We're cool." Ralph can see the others peeking out from their windows, too nervous to come outside. Felix's nervous, too, but not for the same reasons. "They won't take us away today. And if they try, we'll all jump ship together."

Felix stops his pacing and stares at Ralph. "You mean it?"

"Sure. There's no way you're leaving this arcade without Calhoun, and we all know it. You'll go, and we'll go with you." He's made the plan. They can hide out between the games, their characters and all the rest they've adopted lately. It won't happen today. He's sure of that. But someday Litwik's shadow will darken their screen on new game day, and Felix will have to choose between his game and his wife. Ralph intends to make that choice easy on him.

Felix's face breaks into a wide, happy grin. "Brother, you are the best." He slaps Ralph companionably on the back. Ralph grins. He isn't going to tell Felix he'd jump anyway. He's not leaving Princess Poophead alone. She'd be lost without him, poor kid.

Litwik approaches the console. Ralph stands up suddenly, worried. Was he wrong? Are they next on the chopping block? "Uh, Felix?"

Litwik moves off. Ralph breathes a sigh of relief, then groans as the human approaches Tapper's. "Oh no. Not the bar. I mean, not Tapper."

There's a brief flash. Ralph isn't sure if the characters decided to stay together or make a break for it. They might never get plugged in again. You heard stories.

Felix pulls off his cap and rests it against his heart, closing his eyes. He's a good guy. He'll feel as bad for Tapper and the gang as he would for himself and their friends. Ralph's just relieved. "Hey, I'm sure they'll be fine." He pats Felix on the back. "Who do you think the new game will be?"

"I don't know," Felix says, putting his cap back on. They've seen many a game come and go in the last thirty years. He can't mourn all of them forever.

The delivery guys load Tapper's darkened game onto the dolly and roll it away. A few minutes later, they roll a new one in.

Ralph reads the name, already recognizing the side of the console. "Another Hero's Duty. Huh."

Beside him, Felix's eyes grow big.

* * *

"What kind of horse hockey is this!" Calhoun shouts, stalking into their game like she owns the place. She might as well. Bless Felix and his gigantic lug of a sidekick, but this eight bit lunatic factory could use a fast lesson in discipline. Her husband's game had a much better view of the plebes moving in next door, though.

"You've got company, Tamora," Felix says cheerfully.

She glares at him. "A bunch of wet behind the ears mama's boys want to fight Cy-bugs, and you expect me to be happy to train them?"

"Won't they have another Sergeant to do that?"

Her head spins to look at the new game again. Her eyes narrow. "They will." Remembering her marital manners, she pecks him on the cheek. "I'll go reconnoiter, I mean, say hello." She stalks off, but comes up short when she hears footsteps loud behind her. "This is a solo mission."

"Aw, we ought to be neighborly, too," Felix says, and he takes her hand.

"Yeah. Neighborly." Ralph gives her a look over Felix's head, and she nods at him. He's there as backup. Not a bad plan. "Fine. I'm taking point."

"Sounds friendly."

The three of them make their way through Game Central Station, Calhoun not finding a good way to let go of Felix's hand, and not want to admit to him what her real terror is. As they approach the portal, she finally lets go. "You two, cover our six."

"And our seven and eight, too, Honeyplum."

Calhoun hesitates. 'Honeyplum' isn't that bad. "Right." She leads the way in. She doesn't have far to go, and she knows this layout like her own armpit. Also, she can hear voices at twelve o'clock.

"You're not gonna believe what we've got here," sings Vanellope gleefully to someone around the bend. Calhoun reaches the turn, and is unsurprised to see her own face staring back. Vanellope says, "Hey, Calhoun, Felix, and Potty-breath! We've got company!"

"Sergeant!" she says to the other Calhoun, who immediately snaps to attention. "You are officially on duty at Litwik's Arcade." She glances around at the troops. This batch hasn't faced a single invasion, and look shiny. Too shiny, too new, too bright. "Get these spitmops into shape!"

Felix comes forward, his face split by his usual dopey grin. "Nice to meet you, Sergeant Calhoun." He sticks out his hand. The other Calhoun stares at him.

"What the San Juan Hill is up with this outpost?" Other Calhoun doesn't shake his hand.

Ralph says, "Aw, we're just the welcome committee. Also, we've had bad run-ins with escaped bugs, so you know, inspection."

The other Calhoun's spine goes even straighter. Calhoun can't help but notice there's been a slight upgrade to her appearance. This one is even more obviously designed by a greasy-haired slickball who's never had a date. How does her uniform even stay on? "INSPECTION!" the other Calhoun bellows. Her troops instantly fall into formation.

Calhoun will not admit how impressed she is. She paces along the line, hands behind her back. "You call this attention? I wouldn't give you a cockroach's left antenna for the lot of you."

"Nah," Vanellope says. "They look okay." Calhoun shines her glare on the girl, who flinches and puts up her hands. "Sure you know better, though."

The other Calhoun says, "Sergeant, any constructive criticism you have is our pleasure."

Calhoun sniffs and continues inspecting them. But they're new. There isn't a pixel out of place. The bugs in her software release have been upgraded and smoothed out into a lean, mean fighting team. She can't scrape up a single complaint. "Just be ready, maggots. The Cy-bugs won't show you any mercy just because you left your mommies yesterday."

Inspiration strikes her. Baker! Baker has a minor glitch in his programming that make his push-ups look like marshmallows. "Private Baker! Drop and give me twenty!"

This game's Baker drops to the ground. Calhoun winds up her best "You're a disgrace to the uniform, mother pusbucket!" when she sees the perfect lines of his movements. Minor glitch repaired. She saves the "mother pusbucket" for their programmers, feels more than a little sacrilegious for even the thought, and spits to cover her discomfort. "I've seen better push-ups dripped on the Whack-a-Mole by toddlers wearing Pampers. Dismissed."

She spins and turns away. The other Calhoun says, "Sergeant?"

"What?"

"Won't you introduce my men to the rest of the committee?"

Committee? Right. The welcoming committee. "Men, this is President Vanellope von Schweetz, princess of Sugar Rush." Vanellope spins around and bows. "These two are Fix-It Felix Jr. and Wreck-It Ralph from your next door neighbor game." She goes back to the other Calhoun and shoves a finger in her chest, mindful of her prodigious upgrades. "You are the first and last line of defense for them against the Cy-bugs! You do not let those bugs get loose, you roger that?"

"Roger that."

"We're married!" Felix says in a cheerful chirp. Calhoun flinches, and she sees the whole thing flash over her double's face, every memory buried in her backstory subroutine. She remembers the first time her own subroutine activated, and how devastated the shock left her.

She has a choice here. The Calhoun she was would grab her husband's harebrained neck and drag these three yahoos out and let her double deal with this privately.

The Calhoun she is still wants to do that. Instead, she grabs the other Calhoun's hand. "You three, stay here."

She knows the back lines of this game. Unerringly, she leads her twin to an alcove of code nobody else knows is here, except Felix when she wants some private time with him. The other Calhoun looks shell-shocked. Calhoun could slap her out of it. She might.

"You're thinking about Brad."

"He was killed on our wedding day."

"I know." The programmers would answer for this one day, if Calhoun has to personally shove a grav mine down every one of their jock straps herself. She has crystal-clear memories of the man she loved, that they both loved, and just enough awareness to understand he never existed in the game. "He's not real. He's text."

"No," says the other Calhoun. "I loved him. He was real."

Calhoun shrugs. "He's real to you. That's what matters. And you're hurting, and you're going to hurt. But take it from me, you'll get better. This is the bad part. You might even," she grits her teeth, "cry. Let yourself. Do it here so the pigeon-droppings don't find out. Then do your job."

The other Calhoun nods. "Yes, ma'am." Calhoun lets it go. Her double's too shaken up to know better right now.

"I'll tell them you'll be along." She thinks. "And I'll see about getting a bartender installed in your game."

"Thank you."

"Thank me by destroying those Cy-bugs."

* * *

They've got back to Felix's game. He's got a nice little place in the basement of the apartment building, nothing fancy. Calhoun likes spending time here more than she wants to admit. She's softer here, more prone to sunshiny eight-bit thinking. Part of her despises herself and thinks she ought to be doing chin-ups on the bar in the closet. The rest of her is enjoying a bunk that may be pixelated as all get out but is soft as a puppy's backside.

Felix rests his head on his folded hands. "That sure was swell meeting the new team from the new game."

She grumbles but only in her head. This had to come. May as well rip the bandage off fast. "You liked the new Sergeant, didn't you?"

"Sure did."

She sighs. "I'm not standing aside."

"Of course not. You're lying down." Felix blinks at her. "You can't stand when you're lying down."

She loves him for his simplicity and one day, she's going to knock his block off for it. But only inside his game. "Felix … "

"I love when a theory turns out to be right."

"What?"

"The parallel universes. We got to meet a whole 'nother Tamora from a whole 'nother universe. It's too much to hope Litwik will bring in another Fix-It Felix game but I sure would love to meet a parallel me, too, and a parallel Ralph, and Mary, and all the rest."

"I don't follow."

"Somewhere out there are hundreds or thousands of Fix-It Felix Jr. games, if they're still powered on. Thousands of mes. And there's got to be as many Hero's Duty games at least. You're new and popular. Thousands of yous." He chuckles, then looks sad again. "I feel bad for all of them. That nice new Calhoun, too."

Calhoun lays her head back. She can't always follow his logic but she takes a stab. "Because they'll be turned off some day?"

"Naw. That's all of us. I feel bad, because of all the Fix-It Felixes out there, I'm the one lucky enough to fall for you. And you, you're the Tamora Calhoun who spends her days fighting bugs, and her nights and Sunday mornings before eleven palling around with me and Ralph and our friends. We are two lucky, lucky people in the multiverse."

She snorts, but his face is serious. "Don't go egghead on me, Felix."

"No problem there."

Computer games don't dream, not exactly. The rumors of the electric sheep are heavily exaggerated. But in the in-between times, Calhoun's subroutines get a life of their own behind her eyelids.

There's a Calhoun whose program glitches out, who becomes a Cy-bug herself.

There's a Calhoun whose backstory never got programmed, who never knows the name Brad Scott and doesn't have to spend her life regretting his loss.

There's a Calhoun who goes Turbo, taking out her pain on every game she meets.

There's a Calhoun who's been played since the beta test, who's so jaded she can't think of anything but vengeance.

And there's her. She's the Calhoun who found herself in a candy-coated nightmare, who befriended a hulking idiot and a smart-mouthed kid and a stone fool, and who loves all three so much her electrons ache just thinking about the day one of their games gets unplugged.

Parallel hers, parallel thems. Beside her, Felix dreams of making things better. It's his gift, and he gives it to her every day, fixing her while she fights to protect him from the constant threat of invasion. He's a good soul, whose only concern meeting a younger, hotter version of his wife is to feel bad for her. 

Maybe this is the parallel with the happy ending. The sap is enough to make Calhoun vomit just thinking about it. She'll let that go just this time.


End file.
